mOOners in Mexico

By Ken

Retirement in June.  Departure in July.  Sounds easy enough. We have six months to liquidate, have the house ready to be occupied by our son and his fiancee, and have everything in order so that we can travel for an extended period of time.  We can easily have the camper systems and the truck ready, and have our packing and border papers ready. I can provide for our bills and finances, as well as communications to be handled online with our satellite access, and even have tentative itinararies developed.  But our biggest obstacle is a remodel project that must be completed at the same time that all of these other things need to be accomplished.

On a whim we thought it would be a good idea to have our master bath annex an adjacent bedroom so that the master bedroom would have a "real master bathroom", one that's over 10 feet by twenty-two feet.  We're right in the middle of the project. It will have a water closet, large tile shower, two stand-alone lavs, sitting area, and tile floor with sub-tile heating elements. Extensive electrical and plumbing work was involved, which required pulling the subfloor, and re-routing everything. That has all been done, and the subfloor has been replaced.

Adjacent hallways, bedrooms, and a closet were impacted, and in recent days I have been taping and retexturing and painting.  In the "master bath", the walls have all been sheetrocked, taped, and ninety percent mudded and feathered ready for texturing.  The shower water still needs to have the control valve installed and water stubbed out so that concrete backer board can be hung for the tile, once the shower pan is built.  

And, as you know, with construction there will be many challenges involved.  So, you can see there is a lot to do.  It's definitely our biggest obstacle to overcome for our scheduled plan.  The way that I take on projects like this, and I've almost always had some kind of project going on, is to do a little something every day.  Boy, can that be hard at times.  But, that's the key.  Do a little every day. Some days I just stare and think and plan, but usually that's what needed to be done. 

Today I did a little.  Tomorrow I'll do that and maybe more...

mOOner